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Ten years ago around this very time—April through June 2008—our intrepid Microsoft guru Peter Bright evidently had an identity crisis. Could this lifelong PC user really have been pushed to the brink? Was he considering a switch to... Mac OS?!? While our staff hopefully enjoys a less stressful Memorial Day this year, throughout the weekend we're resurfacing this three part series that doubles as an existential operating system dilemma circa 2008. Part one ran on April 21, 2008, and it appears unedited below.

A couple of Gartner analysts have recently claimed that Windows is "collapsing"—that it's too big, too sprawling, and too old to allow rapid development and significant new features. Although organizations like Gartner depend on trolling to drum up business, I think this time they could be onto something. "Collapsing" is over-dramatic—gradual decline is a more likely outcome—but the essence of what they're saying—and why they're saying it—rings true.

Windows is dying, Windows applications suck, and Microsoft is too blinkered to fix any of it—that's the argument. The truth is that Windows is hampered by 25-year old design decisions. These decisions mean that it's clunky to use and absolutely horrible to write applications for. The applications that people do write are almost universally terrible. They're ugly, they're inconsistent, they're disorganized; there's no finesse, no care lavished on them. Microsoft—surely the company with the greatest interest in making Windows and Windows applications exude quality—is, in fact, one of the worst perpetrators.

The unfortunate thing about this is that there is a company that's not only faced similar problems but also tackled them. Apple in the mid-1990s was faced with an operating system that was going nowhere, and needed to take radical action to avoid going out of business. And so that's what Apple did. Apple's role in the industry has always been more prominent than mere sales figures would suggest, but these days even the sales numbers are on the up. There are lessons to be learned from the company in Cupertino; I only hope they will be.

Enlarge/ Windows 98 could show your favorites from Internet Explorer—integrating its OS and its browser got Microsoft into some regulatory trouble, as you might recall.

Andrew Cunningham

A little background

I've never been a Mac user. I've used Macs from time to time, of course, but never owned one myself. As with many Brits d'un certain âge at school I was brought up on a diet of Acorn Archimedes and RISC OS. RISC OS brought with it many notable features: it had a spatial file browser done properly, its menu bar was optimally located, it used bundles for applications, and it had a taskbar/dock before anyone else did. The Archimedes was, however, a footnote in the history of computing, and the only computers I've ever owned have been PCs.

I got my first PC in 1997. It was a Dell Pentium II with Windows 95. I got it because I was interested in computers and I wanted to learn how to program them, so I picked up a student edition of Visual Studio 97 and duly learned C++. At that time, Windows was really the only game in town; Macs were ever so expensive and, as everyone knows, there was no software available for them.

Microsoft was pretty good to me at the time. The Windows OS was fast and reasonably stable. We didn't have to worry about allocating memory to applications or rebuilding our desktops, and although the preemptive multitasking and protected memory were not perfect, the system was obviously more stable than any Mac.

Further Reading

I got cheap student copies of Visual Studio 6 and Office 97. I bought the Windows 98 upgrade on the day of its release, wowed by its sleek new look (gradients in the title bars!). Microsoft sent me copies of an exciting new operating system called "Windows NT 5 Beta 2" which I eagerly installed and ran as my primary OS until it expired; Microsoft even sent me a copy of Windows 2000 for my trouble. That OS was bullet-proof; it was quick, it ran all the applications I wanted, it supported my software—what more could someone ask for?

I began working in late 1999 as a software developer, writing all sorts of programs in Java, Visual Basic 6, C++, SQL Server, and whatever else I had to use. Again, I felt well-treated by Microsoft. MSDN Library was an invaluable developer resource; Microsoft was open about what it was doing, giving out betas of Windows XP (or Whistler, as it then was) to all and sundry, and it felt like the company knew what it was doing. Redmond had a roadmap of Whistler and Blackcomb; it had a plan.

This was attractive to someone who programmed for a living. Developers felt valued, like the company cared about them. I enjoy programming, and I enjoy writing software. I did then; I do now. So for me, this is really a key piece of what a platform has to offer.

Andrew Cunningham isn't the only one who's been dabbling in OS 9 within recent years.

A brief history of Macs

The Mac at this time was still struggling with its archaic OS and its underpowered hardware, and the entire platform felt stagnant.

State of the art, circa 2000

Apple

In 2001, Apple just about managed to get OS X out the door—dragging Mac software kicking and screaming into the 21st century—but had so little confidence in the thing that it still made the computers default to Mac OS 9. Even Mac proponents regarded OS X as little better than a beta. But it was the start of a big change in the fortunes of the Mac platform. Although OS X was slow and buggy, it also hinted at being something more; a platform for the future. The infrastructure was sound, and Quartz was downright modern. Its Cocoa API and Objective-C were an exciting development platform offering interesting new features like "System Services."

Part of this was by accident. If Apple's Copland project had come to fruition, it probably wouldn't have happened at all. Apple's intent was to update the aging OS piecemeal, adding protected memory and preemptive multitasking, and, piece by piece, update the core OS libraries to better support these modern features. Eventually this would become sufficiently advanced that the "Gershwin" OS would be "fully modern," whatever this meant (even Apple wasn't sure).

Feature creep and mismanagement resulted in the cancellation of Copland. Instead of developing a new OS from the existing one, Apple decided to purchase a modern OS and use that as the basis for its future operating system. This resulted in the purchase of NeXT, and NeXTstep went on to form the basis of Mac OS X.

Admittedly, I would've happily played an Apple/NeXT Q*bert knock-off.

Aurich Lawson

NeXTstep was pretty radical in its day; it's thanks to NeXTstep that OS X uses Objective-C and has an Objective-C library. Display Postscript in NeXTstep became Display PDF in OS X. NeXTstep had the same combination of Mach and BSD code that became MacOS X's Darwin kernel. Obviously, this still left Apple with a lot of work to do; NeXTstep couldn't run Mac apps, which was obviously a big problem for a MacOS successor, so Apple devised the "Classic" virtual machine to provide support for legacy applications. New applications would use the new Cocoa or Carbon APIs.

Further Reading

This approach—forced on it due to screwing up the Copland project—put Apple in a strong position. The new OS was free of many of the legacy constraints that the Copland approach would have caused; the clumsy old APIs were restricted to the Classic environment, and they didn't form a part of the modern OS core. Although the new APIs were not entirely new—the Obj-C Cocoa API was based on the NeXTstep API, and Carbon was similar to the old MacOS API—they were cleaned up, allowing bad decisions of the past to be fixed.

316 Reader Comments

As stated above, we've resurfaced this piece while staff enjoy a (theoretically more relaxing) Memorial Day weekend than Peter did back in 2008. When asked about resurfacing this particular series, btw, the esteemed Mr. Bright said:

Quote:

My main concern is people complaining that I never finished... after abandoning the idea and ditching macOS almost entirely because Apple just doesn't build the hardware I want, lol.

As stated above, we've resurfaced this piece while staff enjoy a (theoretically more relaxing) Memorial Day weekend than Peter did back in 2008. When asked about resurfacing this particular series, btw, the esteemed Mr. Bright said:

Quote:

My main concern is people complaining that I never finished... after abandoning the idea and ditching macOS almost entirely because Apple just doesn't build the hardware I want, lol.

Though I bet a lot of my complaints still have some truth today.

Could you write about Microsoft's attempt on replace Windows with a more modern Midori OS before they cancelled it? It was certainly more modern

I worked on creating a tool which would run graphics (Metal or D3D) while tried to live in the native toolkit world (Cocoa or Win32/WFP) well. That graphics-toolkit interaction is completed in no time on macOS. On Windows, I halted at the first step of thinking how to do it. WFP is not officially evolved any more. UWP is only for sandboxed app. Win32 is antique. And interwork between C++ and C# is a nightmare.

These days I'm thinking of switching from Mac to Windows 10/Linux, as the hardware is insanely cheaper and there isn't much of a case for general purpose application programming (for hobbyist programmers)-- especially as web apps are quickly becoming the new platform.

If you get through publishing all of this series, I hope you add a 'ten years later' epilogue. There have been tons of changes since 2008-- macOS is officially 'mature' and iOS is the leading edge of the Apple OSs. But also, all around, Apple seems to be drifting technically, with CPUs and GPUs that are faster and faster, but not really going towards any particular goal faster and faster.

These days I'm thinking of switching from Mac to Windows 10/Linux, as the hardware is insanely cheaper and there isn't much of a case for general purpose application programming (for hobbyist programmers)-- especially as web apps are quickly becoming the new platform.

You could have both. I'm typing this comment from a hackintosh. It takes some technical knowledge, but it's nothing the avg ars reader can't manage.

I feel the opposite. Mac OSX and our Macs are getting worse and worse with each progressive update. sure windows 10 has issues but it seems to be generally improveing. apple is making managing the Macs in a corporate environment harder and harder.

These days I'm thinking of switching from Mac to Windows 10/Linux, as the hardware is insanely cheaper and there isn't much of a case for general purpose application programming (for hobbyist programmers)-- especially as web apps are quickly becoming the new platform.

You could have both. I'm typing this computer from a hackintosh. It takes some technical knowledge, but it's nothing the avg ars reader can't manage.

I was so surprised and dismayed that windows 10 wasn't as portable as macOS was.

I couldn't install it on an external drive. At all.Meanwhile, I could load my external drive with a macOS partition, and run it on any supported mac out their.I can't do the same with windows, or its much more difficult to do so with windows.

I was so surprised and dismayed that windows 10 wasn't as portable as macOS was.

I couldn't install it on an external drive. At all.Meanwhile, I could load my external drive with a macOS partition, and run it on any supported mac out their.I can't do the same with windows, or its much more difficult to do so with windows.

I feel the opposite. Mac OSX and our Macs are getting worse and worse with each progressive update. sure windows 10 has issues but it seems to be generally improveing. apple is making managing the Macs in a corporate environment harder and harder.

I don't know about the corporate environment, which is not something I would ever consider Macs for, but for me at home and at (non-corporate) work, macOS is a sublime operating system.

Windows definitely peaked with 7 for me. I know they've made advances, but 10 just doesn't feel as coherent. And Windows Update is a big ball of suck.

Funny. I use a MBP every day and I think that Mac OS sucks and it's applications "They're ugly, they're inconsistent, they're disorganized; there's no finesse, no care lavished on them".

Unfortunately I agree, the past 10 years for MacOS/OS X have not been nearly as successful as the first 8. Still a great OS but it has definitely gotten sloppier & less refined. Everything Apple does has since Steve Jobs passed unfortunately.... I personally blame poor leadership by Tim Cook but I am sure everyone is tired of hearing that old rhetoric.

Who remembers the glitch in one of their updates (ill admit maybe it was a beta update?) where one could simply bypass the "admin credentials required" screen by simply entering NOTHING in the password screen? That was the enlightening moment for me.

If Apple still made computers that where decent I would probably have stuck with them and not be using a Dell XPS 13. The great touchpad on Macs is not enough to make up for all the failings of there disposable laptops.

Ah yes, the old Mac vs Windows. It is interesting that some things don't change.

But the real difference is this: Windows in the Enterprise. While most versions of Win10 should only be given to Russian spies, in laws that you really don't like or those unfortunates on the seventh level of hell, Enterprise is reasonably well behaved. It doesn't throw ads at you. You can develop an upgrade strategy that makes sense.

It's fast and stable. It isn't very consistent, peel off the label and you see some pretty crufty old stuff. And, as the fine article (from 2008!) points out, the word 'continuity' just doesn't bring up any hits.

But you can run small and large businesses on it. Really big businesses. Active Directory certainly has issues (**insert any one of thousands of poignant diatribes here**) but OS X has ... crickets.

It's obvious that Apple made this a conscious decision and one that, at least for it's stock price, has worked spectacularly. But some people and companies actually need to get icky, boring Enterprise level work done.

Funny. I use a MBP every day and I think that Mac OS sucks and it's applications "They're ugly, they're inconsistent, they're disorganized; there's no finesse, no care lavished on them".

I bet it's a 'grass is greener' problem at this point. Of the two platforms, Windows used to be objectively worse but had better software support. Now it's caught up in the usability and visual pleasantness area and we both have a decent and usable Posix environment in which to get work done if necessary. But people are getting creeped out by MS's data collection, which I understand.

Funny. I use a MBP every day and I think that Mac OS sucks and it's applications "They're ugly, they're inconsistent, they're disorganized; there's no finesse, no care lavished on them".

Unfortunately I agree, the past 10 years for MacOS/OS X have not been nearly as successful as the first 8. Still a great OS but it has definitely gotten sloppier & less refined. Everything Apple does has since Steve Jobs passed unfortunately.... I personally blame poor leadership by Tim Cook but I am sure everyone is tired of hearing that old rhetoric.

Who remembers the glitch in one of their updates (ill admit maybe it was a beta update?) where one could simply bypass the "admin credentials required" screen by simply entering NOTHING in the password screen? That was the enlightening moment for me.

That's the new user talking.I bet some here still remember that leopard bug where copying and pasting would result in a data loss.

Or that snow leopard bug that would delete your home folder roundumly.Or the neglect of the mac pro by Steve after the iPhone.

This is increasingly the case even for people who have used Apple hardware for years.

I've got this five-year-old Macbook Pro, and I just don't see an upgrade out there. And for Mac Pro or Mac Mini owners, it's even worse.

Genuinely curious as to why you dont believe there is an upgrade for your macbook pro. This seems to be a general concensus amongst those who own a 2012 MBP. No one ever goes into depth as to why. Is it because of the lack of user replaceable parts, lack of USB A, etc?

Funny. I use a MBP every day and I think that Mac OS sucks and it's applications "They're ugly, they're inconsistent, they're disorganized; there's no finesse, no care lavished on them".

I bet it's a 'grass is greener' problem at this point. Of the two platforms, Windows used to be objectively worse but had better software support. Now it's caught up in the usability and visual pleasantness area and we both have a decent and usable Posix environment in which to get work done if necessary. But people are getting creeped out by MS's data collection, which I understand.

There's just going to issues with either system.

I disagree on the 'visual pleasantness area' since I really dislike the whole 'flatness' thing. But the data collection and the lack of real control in regards to updates, cortana, etc, has led me to Linux. Almost all of the applications I used daily on Windows are available on Linux . So, after Windows 10 came out and I found out about all the issues, I started dual booting with Mint Linux (using the Mate desktop). After the couple years of using Linux about the only thing that's keeping the Windows 10 partition on my machine is Games since only about a third of my Steam games work under Linux .

I also tried FreeBSD and really liked it better than Linux. The problem is the lack of vendor support and since FreeBSD is less popular than Linux, it trails in supporting newer hardware.

I get what your saying and I’m all for it, but I just feel that companies that buy Windows in bulk is trying to convince Microsoft otherwise. Just take Windows 7 for example. That should have ended support a long time ago, yet it continues to live. My company is still using it and there are no signs of transitioning to 10. As for Apple, they don’t give a f—.

With the benefit of hindsight, the two funniest parts of the article, for me, were:

1. Peter was a strong proponent of a fresh, exciting new take on Windows, and he got it with Windows 8... and he was the only one who liked it! 😂2. Peter cites Final Cut Pro as a "best-of-breed application" that Apple knew it HAD to get right "because the markets into which these programs are sold won't stand for anything less." But I certainly remember the backlash when Final Cut Pro X was released. Betrayed Mac users took to calling it "iMovie Pro." (No doubt it's improved since then.)

Having Win10 and Mac High Sierra, I can't say one is better than the other. Win10 is solid and not susceptible to BSOD of years ago mostly caused by third party drivers. The latest build has a clipboard feature that saves data that you cut/copy so you aren't limited to the last thing you cut or copied. Mac has that with 3rd party software. But the bottom line is that I'm invested into Windows software just like I'm invested in iPhone software. It will take a lot for me to change operating systems as my main computer.

I sometimes toy with the idea of switching to a Mac to take advantage of the unified OSX/iOS environment. I have a physical disability and it would be nice to respond to phone calls and texts from my computer. But then I tell myself that iPhones will probably be more compatible with Windows in the future and it's not worth the investment in a whole new ecosystem.

I suppose I could also switch to an Android phone, but that's another discussion.